After heartworm treatment and a bath, Mila begins her recovery with walks in the backyard.

Back in August, I wrote about a nine-year-old German Shepherd named Mila, who was undergoing heartworm treatment. She’s a foster dog being cared for by Jean, a volunteer for Big Hearts Big Dog Rescue in Western New York. Jean created a blog to report on Mila’s progress and more generally about heartworm prevention and treatment. Mila is Jean’s third heartworm-positive foster dog.

For months, Jean worked hard to keep Mila quiet, cool and comfortable—while the Immiticide killed off the dreaded heartworms. One of my favorite posts was about “Dr. Bruno,” a former therapy dog who comforted Mila and alerted Jean to changes in the patient’s recovery. What a wonderful idea to include a therapy dog for a canine patient.

I checked back in with Jean this week and she reported that Mila’s treatments are concluded and she is doing well, although she has lost muscle tone from her months of bed rest.

“We need to bring that back slowly and carefully because she has some pre-existing ortho issues,” Jean writes. “So we are starting with simply walking the yard, just like we did when she came into foster and had been kenneled for months.

“Mila is also a very smart girl who has a bit of a mind of her own, and for the time of her treatment she did not have any expectations for her behavior other than staying quiet, so we are doing some NILIF [nothing in life is free] to get that back in shape too! She remains upbeat and social and just needs everything in smaller doses for now as she gets back in the swing of things. She is still cute and funny—none of that lessened!”

She might even be heading for a forever home; someone has submitted an application to adopt her. There are still hoops to be jumped through—home visits and references, etc., but it’s “very exciting and I am keeping my fingers crossed that in the next month this will be how the blog will close,” Jean writes.

I’m awestruck by all that Jean has done to create a second chapter for Mila.

Meanwhile, on the heartworm front, it’s important to remember that although the weather is cooling around the country, heartworm remains a threat. “Unfortunately for our pets, mosquitoes are hardy and have proven their ability to survive year-round across the United States,” says American Heartworm Society president Wallace Graham DVM. “Warm microclimates, both outdoors and indoors, can foster mosquito survival and pets can facilitate the spread of heartworm.” Pets can also contract heartworms when their owners transport them from one area of the country to another.